Amazon shows off Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE for $499, WiFi for $299

For $50 per year, customers get 250MB of data per month on the 4G LTE version.

Amazon unveiled the successors to its Kindle Fire at a press event today in Santa Monica. The 7-inch version will have twice the RAM of its predecessor, "40 percent faster performance" with a new processor, and longer battery life. The new 8.9-inch version has a 1920x1200 display at 254 pixels per inch and will be available with a 4G LTE option for a significant extra cost.

The 8.9-inch Fire HD measures 8.8 millimeters thick, weighs 20 ounces, and has a laminated display intended to reduce glare from external light by 25 percent. Inside is a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 OMAP4470 processor, dual Dolby Digital stereo speakers, a dual-band WiFi chip, and two antennas for WiFi reception. Amazon claims the Fire's WiFi is 54 percent faster than on the Nexus 7, and 41 percent faster than on the iPad 3.

The 7-inch Fire HD has a 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP 4460 processor and 1280x800 HD display, while the non-HD version has a 1.2GHz OMAP 4430 dual-core processor and 1024x600 resolution.

All Fire models except the non-HD 7-inch Fire will include front-facing cameras, a feature that was entirely lacking in the original Fire. HDMI out and Bluetooth have also been added. Amazon has not yet provided battery estimates for the 8.9-inch Fires, but the new 7-inch HD model is quoted at 11 hours of continuous use.

Amazon saw fit to bestow the WiFi-only Fire HDs with 16GB of storage, more than the pitiful 8GB found on the original Kindle Fire. The bump is crucial for a device meant to display HD content, though 16GB isn't exactly roomy--a 32GB option will also be available. The 8.9-inch 4G LTE version of the Fire HD will have 32GB of storage (more information available in the story on that device) with a 64GB option.

The Kindle Fire OS and content system have received some tweaks as well. A new feature called X-Ray gives users a new layer of interaction with content; for example, tapping on an actor's face while a movie is playing pulls up their IMDb page, or tapping a term in a textbook highlights all the locations it's mentioned and offers relevant YouTube and Wikipedia pages. The Fires will have access to 100,000 audiobooks, courtesy of Audible. The audiobooks are equipped with Whispersync, so that users no longer have to manually locate their place in the audio or text version when switching back and forth.

Amazon has retooled the e-mail application to include Exchange support and calendar and contact sync. The OS will also include custom versions of Facebook and Skype apps, as well as controls called "Kindle FreeTime" that allow parents to set time limits on certain activities for kids (reading or movie-watching, for example). The Fires will retain the carousel we saw on the original Fire as the primary navigation hub.

The new Kindle Fires follow in the footsteps of the Kindle Fire Amazon launched in November 2011, which sold millions over the holiday season and constituted 22 percent of tablet sales in the US but was discontinued in August.

The new 7-inch Fire will be priced at $159 for a non-HD version and $199 for an HD version, and will likely go toe-to-toe with Google's $199 Nexus 7, which rocked the 7-inch tablet segment in July. The 8.9-inch Fire HD is priced at $299 for a WiFi only version, and $499 for a 4G LTE version. The only available data plan for the Fire HD 4G LTE is priced at $49.99 a year, and includes 250MB a month, 200GB of cloud storage, and a $10 Amazon credit. According to Amazon's product page for the 8.9-inch Fire, there will be 3GB and 5GB data plan options, but no pricing information for them has been released. According to TechCrunch, the Fire devices will be available this round for the first time in the UK and France.

Addressing the prices, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, said, "We want to make money when our customers use our devices, not when they buy our devices." The 7-inch versions ship on September 14, but those looking for a bigger screen will have to wait until November 20 to get their hands on the 8.9-inch Fire HD. Online orders are open on all models.

Amazon's event has recently finished, but we will update this article if more details become available through the company.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

And does it still run the junky customized slow version of Android 2.3 that the original Kindle Fire did?

In my opinion, all the blame for the slowness and clunkiness of the KF goes to the hardware, not the software. The CPU/GPU/RAM specs are iPad 2 equivalent, and driving the same number of pixels (still talking about the original Kindle Fire). Clearly the responsiveness is nowhere near iOS level (or even Android-buttery-Jellybean level).

So faster hardware and more RAM is nice, but unless they fix the software (which in my opinion boils down to getting Jellybean on there), no thanks.

As long as the bootloaders are still unlocked, these look very promising.

Otherwise, all the hardware specs in the world won't disguise the fact that it's still running Android 2.x. Without the Fragments API, you're just running phone aps on a very large screen. high resolution won't help much there.

I'm most interested to see what the OS is based on. If they're still pushing Android 2.3, then they'd have to make it even cheaper I'd say. No one wants Froyo tablet anymore (did they ever?). It's gotta be at least ICS, but Jelly Bean is what most people expect these days for a brand new tablet. And hopefully they won't bastardize it as much as they did with the original Fire. The Nexus 7 still has the advantage of running straight Google code and with the promise of a continual upgrade path to the latest and greatest. Amazon has so far shown us that they're quite happy sticking with outdated feature sets.

And the race to the bottom is well on its way! Tablets are going to have profit margins the size of Netbooks at this rate.

Hopefully, yes.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

...is this the only android tablet to-date competitive with the ipad 3 as a comic book reader?..we love our ipad as a reader, but my SO's been holding out for an android tablet of her own to achieve a similar display specification...

This race to the bottom is great for us, but this has got to hurt the companies. I'm now waiting for Google to release a $100, improved Nexus 7. I'll probably spend about $20 on Google Play stuff. Thanks Google!!

So far, this is a pretty strong showing from Amazon. I just wish there was a new DX replacement for math, science and programming books. But maybe the Fire HD's high resolution display will be good for these types of books.

And the race to the bottom is well on its way! Tablets are going to have profit margins the size of Netbooks at this rate.

Hopefully, yes.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

Race to the bottom is good for the consumer in the short run, but bad in the long run, because it defeats the incentive to innovate. I for one do not want this market to become commoditized.

And the race to the bottom is well on its way! Tablets are going to have profit margins the size of Netbooks at this rate.

Hopefully, yes.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

I think it's because we realize that if a company goes out of business a lot of people will lose their jobs.

$159? Sweet merciful poop, that's a cheap tablet. I'm just worried about the fact that we're seeing the same race to the bottom in the 7-inch tablet market. It works for companies that have secondary revenue streams, but there's not much room in that playground. I doubt many Android OEMs are going to be able to keep pace.

That leaves the question: where does Android sit with 10-inch devices? And I don't think that looks too good right now, either. The other question is how this affects Microsoft's Surface pricepoint, and how that will affect OEMs with Windows RT. With x86 tablets, they have a chance (especially with full convertibles), but man...

I'm thinking Windows 8/Windows RT could wind up being the only credible iPad competitor...and I'm surprised at that. Their late moves into the space should have left Android a gaping hole, but I think Android might be stuck in the 7-inch space (which isn't really a bad thing).

To be certain though...I'm not sure a race to the bottom on price is going to help anyone but Apple. People still want "premium" tablets. I think the Surface project, if nurtured and refined properly, could be in that group.

Other than screen resolution, everything in the new Fire could have been in the old Fire. It only took me 5 minutes of playing with the old Fire that it wasn't competitive. The scroll didn't even follow your finger.

And the race to the bottom is well on its way! Tablets are going to have profit margins the size of Netbooks at this rate.

Hopefully, yes.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

Race to the bottom is good for the consumer in the short run, but bad in the long run, because it defeats the incentive to innovate. I for one do not want this market to become commoditized.

I think the ability to lower the price of something is pretty innovative, actually.

And the race to the bottom is well on its way! Tablets are going to have profit margins the size of Netbooks at this rate.

Hopefully, yes.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

Race to the bottom is good for the consumer in the short run, but bad in the long run, because it defeats the incentive to innovate. I for one do not want this market to become commoditized.

If they were making their products somewhere other than china I'd care a bit more. As it is most multinational electronics conglomerates aren't what I'd consider friendly enough to care about what their margins are. There will always be innovation, and the fact of the matter is the more commoditized the market is the more incentive there will be for companies to figure out what the next breakthrough will be that lets them get a leg up on the other guys.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

Race to the bottom is good for the consumer in the short run, but bad in the long run, because it defeats the incentive to innovate. I for one do not want this market to become commoditized.[/quote]

You don't know anything about economics. Commoditized markets are excellent things. They create a baseline from which to innovate from. It is far more accurate to say that they are a requirement for innovation than any sort of hindrance.

If we never had a commodity market in PC hardware, the web would never have been world-wide. It would have been another miscellaneous academic project; a glorified Gophernet. The thing that made the Web so influential was widely available, inexpensive computer hardware. If computers had luxury-item markup, or if they had such 'differentiation' as competing network protocols (hello, x500!), nonstandard video hardware, or basic interface differences, then they would never have reached the widespread availability that led to the modern Internet. Innovation is what happens when you can take the hardware platform for granted.

Anyway, To get back to my earlier point-- not only is it sad that alleged human beings start cheering for multinational corporate P/L statements, it's even more sad when they show up their ignorance in a feeble attempt at defending such a dismal outlook.

And the race to the bottom is well on its way! Tablets are going to have profit margins the size of Netbooks at this rate.

Hopefully, yes.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't hold any stock in electronics manufacturers, but still have runaway stockholm syndrome when it comes to those companies' profit margins? Isn't it absolutely dismal that there are alleged human beings rooting for the P/L statements of multinational corporations?

Race to the bottom is good for the consumer in the short run, but bad in the long run, because it defeats the incentive to innovate. I for one do not want this market to become commoditized.

I'd argue that the incentive remains: if you can't beat them on price, beat them on features. Or as Apple showed, beat them on the user experience.

As far as being worried about a company's bottom line because of possible loss of jobs, that's a whole nuther argument, but to start with: CEO compensation and competitive products. Reduce the former and increase the latter and you won't have anything to worry about.